The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

There would be no satisfaction in writing such letters from your club to the secretary of a company. To have the opportunity to be saucy to a member of his Majesty's Government is only given to some people when they make use of the Post Office. Men point to the loss to the Post Office in working the telegraphs. “Is this not a proof of the inefficiency of the permanent official?” But certain things should be remembered before making such accusations. What are the chief causes of the loss? Parliament insisted upon sixpenny telegrams, and they are certainly not remunerative; no private company would touch them at that price, except perhaps to certain towns and districts where the business would pay its way. The Post Office telegraphs everywhere at that price. Parliament also insisted upon cheap Press telegrams, which are a loss to the Post Office, though a great gain to the public. And as a contributory cause to the loss must be mentioned the telephone itself, which has to a certain extent destroyed the most remunerative portion of telegraph work, the transmission of short messages. Nearly every village has its telegraph. Numbers of offices are kept open all night. The railway companies have an immense free service over the whole Post Office system. But the man whose telephone service has for the moment gone wrong forgets all this, and in his indignation he attacks the whole system. The United States is practically the only country of any importance in which the telephone system is not owned and worked by the State. The General Manager of the Post Office Telephone Service, who paid an official visit to the United States in 1910, in answer to an inquiry as to whether the service in New York is as good as it is usually represented to be, stated frankly that “the service given in New York City, where the telephone problems are similar to those that confront us in London, is unquestionably superior to ours. But,” he added, “I believe that we are rapidly catching up, and I feel sure that at no distant date it will be commonly acknowledged that the service in London is equivalent to that of New York.”